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Temples and priests

Hi All. Sorry I have some noob questions about priests and temples as I haven't played since age 19 and I don't think they were around then.

What is the general strategy around priests? Does everyone get them? Are they able to be killed? Do they leave if you demolish their temples? It seems like they are something you might build up at the start to 10PPA then demolish all temples. What % do people run and when? Why would anyone have weaponries if priests give offence and defence bonus (or do people run both)? Am I missing something about them?

Any info would be appreciated (I can't seem to find much past the guide)

Thanks

Hal - March 2019

welcome back beers, i had quite some trouble getting around temples and priests myself the guide leaves a lot to be desired.

temples produce 1 priest per tick (2 for templars), PPA is what gives you the bonus (resource production and off/def). priests can't be killed, and you can't have more than 10PPA (or 20ppa for temps), so you want to demolish temples when you have 10ppa otherwise it's a waste of space. PPA stacks with walls/weaps so it's an added bonus.

whether you keep it or not is up to your strategy. as priests also pay tax, economically it's usually worth it to run temples, but you need to think about space efficiency too as priests will take up room, and based on % added to off/def you'll always be worse off efficiency wise keeping priests compared to say extra def/off specs

Bolle - March 2019

To add on to what Hal said, running temples is an investment in the future. It pays off in the long run, but there are some caveats:

- 1 priest per tick is a lot less than 400 cr from a mine in that same tick. Growth science can also boost mine production changing the dynamic again later in the age. The question then becomes: if I go Temples now, will I be able to grow as much as the other players. A 2k tribe earns more than a 1500 acre tribe. So that's something to consider.
tl;dr it's a long term strategy with short term penalties.

Think of it like this: 10 PPA gives you 20% extra mining income and 10% extra offense/defense. But if you run 0 mines that's pointless.
Also, 20% of 2000 is like 400, so being 2400 acres with no PPA is better than 2000 with PPA. You get extra citz from those 400 acres that give income that isn't provided by Temples.

- 10 PPA at 1k acres is nice, but that's only 5 PPA at 2k acres. So is it really worth it to invest a lot in it early?

- Then again, if you're a 2k Templar and don't want to grow but just be a powerhouse, 2k might be just what you want to be. Different strategies for different goals.

I personally like to wait until 2k. Why? Because 500 -> 2k is x4, so the value of a temple at 500 acres is 25% of what it is at 2000, assuming you grow that much.
You're unlikely to grow much bigger than 4-6k pretty often, so when you start at 2k the penalty of devalued priests is a lot lower.

Mistro - March 2019

For attackers priests are usually always worth it as you get both offence and defence bonus. For thief it’s risky because your citz are already lower due to needing thieves.

Mages is in the middle less risky but as previously stated the negatives are applicable and there is no benefit from offence.

Bolle - March 2019

One more thing: since priests give % off/def bonus there's a measurable point where a priest produces more defense than a unit and thereby ends up being more space efficient.

For example, at 10k acres 10 PPA is 100k priests.At 300 DPA that means a 30 DPA bonus, so each 10k priests (1 PPA) give 3 DPA or 30k def, so each priest gives 3 def (30,000 def / 10,000 priests).In other words, a priest in that scenario is effectively a 0/3 unit that pays taxes but can get you killed during a KT.

So in practice, priests almost always make it more likely to get you killed, but they do provide defense and more income.

You can also calculate in how many ticks a priest pays off. If you realize that 1 temple produces 1 priest, that means a priest needs to equal 400 cr.So if you are 1k acres and have 1k priests, that's 1000*400=400,000 crowns you didn't earn. But these 1k priests give you 2% more income on mines. So assuming you run 40% mines now producing not 400*400=160,000 but 400*440=176,000, that's a 16k difference. So 400,000/16,000=25 ticks to earn them back and from that point you make a profit.Of course it doesn't work if you also grow in that time period. So that's the tough bit.

Beers1989 - March 2019

Awesome thanks for all the info! Priests may not be the best for me then as a thief but I will consider them more when I'm a bit bigger.